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Audio pop/CPU spike on Mac

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cochereau32

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  • Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:11 pm

Audio pop/CPU spike on Mac

PostSat Jan 08, 2022 10:08 pm

Hi all,

I’ve searched on here and looked and cursed and…yeah. So forgive me if there’s some easy solution to this I’ve somehow missed.

I recently upgraded to a MOTU 24ao and lo and behold it’s doing the thing that apparently Mac computers do with the T2 chip- namely audio cracks and CPU spikes every 5-10 minutes. I’ve tried all the things that other forums have recommended to do with the computer (disable the automatic clock updating etc) and I can’t get it to stop.

Has anyone with a USB audio interface and a Mac successfully solved this problem??

Thanks very much!
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davidfindlay

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Re: Audio pop/CPU spike on Mac

PostTue Jan 11, 2022 10:07 am

Hi cochereau32,

I have a Mac-based system with a USB 2.0 audio interface; perhaps the following may be of use.

At the beginning of 2020, I moved my Hauptwerk system to a new Mac mini. At the time, the T2/USB 2.0 audio glitch issue was a fairly hot topic. I seem to recall it was rumoured that an OS update would/should fix the issue — I believe the appropriate OS update to get was to 10.14.4. At the time, barring the OS update, it was recommended that either:
(i) one replace the USB 2.0 audio interface with a USB 3.0 or thunderbolt interface (perhaps not very practical); or
(ii) one acquire a “certified” thunderbolt 3 powered hub (the rationale here being that such a device creates a separate external USB bus that’s not affected by the T2 chip and on which one places the audio interface).

Ultimately, I had to resort to using a thunderbolt 3 hub, although I don’t believe I actually had any problems with my USB 2.0 audio interface. I did have a USB 2.0 related problem, in that occasionally the keypresses from my MIDI console would take rather a long time to be received by Hauptwerk — which, of course, resulted in a rather unsatisfactory playing experience. I discovered that the Mac mini was rather ‘cleverly’ placing all the USB 2.0 peripherals onto the same internal USB bus, independently of the actual physical ports used to connect the devices on the back of the Mac. I didn’t think that this was a particularly good idea; and adding the thunderbolt hub enabled the devices to be split over several USB buses (and the audio interface ended up on a bus all on its own, as did the MIDI console).

I don’t know how much of this is of any use to you (e.g. I don’t know what hardware or OS version you have), but I’d suggest:
(i) making sure you’re running 10.14.4 or later (always on the assumption that later OS updates haven’t reintroduced the same or a similar bug); and
(ii) making sure your audio interface isn’t sharing a USB bus with any other high-bandwidth peripheral (and perhaps even removing any other devices on the same bus temporarily to see if that resolves your issue).

Best regards,

David
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cochereau32

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Re: Audio pop/CPU spike on Mac

PostWed Jan 26, 2022 12:38 pm

Thanks very much for the reply, David. I’ll give your suggestions a shot! I’m fairly surprised no other replies have surfaced, we can’t be the only ones to encounter this bug…

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